In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, user equipment (UE) establishes a bearer while connecting to a network, regardless of whether the UE initiates a service. If a service initiated by the UE needs transmission of relatively sparse data or the UE does not initiate any service, the established bearer is wasted.
To improve resource usage, in a 3rd-Generation (3G) mobile communications technology, it is proposed that UE establishes a bearer when the UE initiates a service. In the 3G mobile communications technology, the UE initiates a bearer activation request to a radio network controller (RNC) when initiating a service, and establishes a bearer by exchanging signaling with the RNC, an serving GPRS support node (SGSN), and a gateway (GW). In a process of establishing the bearer during initiation of the service, the UE needs to exchange signaling messages with multiple network devices. Consequently, bearer establishment delays and overheads are relatively large.